


Precious Trust And Small Revelations

by alyyks



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Canon-Typical Violence, GFY, Obi-Wan Needs a Hug, Other, de-aged obi-wan, feelings are complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: Grabbing a pre-teen version of his General off the battlefield was not how Cody had seen this day going.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The rough start of this was originally posted on [my tumblr](http://alyyks.tumblr.com/post/118902601538) as an answer to [noxgold's](http://noxgold.tumblr.com/) prompt of "What would happen if Obi-Wan was de-aged on a mission and his clones had to babysit him until Anakin arrived?"
> 
> Beta-read by [imjz](http://imjz.tumblr.com/), who is amazing and probably curbed my comma and dashes problem for good. 
> 
> Can possibly be read as a prequel to [In Your Hands Hold The World](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5749996)—while it's not intended as such, it works.

Stopping in the middle of a firefight was a death sentence. Cody had been trained to never stop; he had seen the consequences, knew them in his bones. Stop and you were dead, stop and you couldn’t keep fighting. It was unacceptable.

Still, he stopped, because his General stopped, was hit—or had he been hit first?—and crumpled to the side, almost out of Cody’s sight. None of this was acceptable, so Cody jumped after him, and-

In the absence of his General—or of General Skywalker—Cody was Second in Command on the ground. It took him only a few precious seconds to assess the situation, impossible as it was—he was seeing a lot of impossible under General Kenobi—, and to call a retreat to their previous position. Without a Jedi at their head, their push toward the Separatist position was too risky. Their previous position was better placed for defense and possible evacuation.

Cody grabbed the bo- grabbed his General, carefully positioning his now-larger body to cover Kenobi, clipped Kenobi’s lightsaber to his belt, and retreated. 

+

“… idea what _in all the hells_ could have happened, this is-”

“I’m well aware this is impossible, Cross. His status?”

“He… seems to be a healthy pre-teen male human? I have nothing else, Commander. He’s not injured, scans aren’t picking anything, whatever happened seems to have… de-aged him?”

Cody took pity on his baffled medic and put a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Cross.”

Cross nodded absently, saluted just as absently, and left the General’s tent in the direction of the medical tent, not giving a single look back. Cody made a mental note to buy the man the alcoholic beverage of his choice, the stiffer the better, next time they were at a cantina.

He crossed his arms, his back to the until now seldom-used cot that took the back of the tent. “I know you’re awake.”

Cody didn’t know what he had been hoping for. A fully-grown General, back to normal, would have been nice. Instead, when he turned around, a boy who would barely reach his waist once standing looked back with very blue eyes from the cot.

“Where am I?” the boy asked.

“GAR base camp 3, on Tallassenes.”

“… and who are _you_?”

Cody had been shot before, and that question hurt just as much, if not more. He didn’t let any of it show on his face or in his body language. “Commander Cody, your second in command, sir.”

“Second in command? How?”

The boy sat up, gathering the folds of his too-large under-tunic around him. He’d need proper clothing, if only to be protected from the elements—the wind and dust were relentless. At the moment, he was staring at the material as if he had never seen it before, and stealing glances at Cody. Cody suspected he’d have been stared at, but the bo- Kenobi was too polite for that. Or shy, at the moment.

“You’re usually… older.”

The veneer of shyness dropped, and the boy wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I was informed that the best description of this kind of event was ‘weird Jedi shit’, sir.” It seemed to be a satisfying enough answer. Kenobi nodded, pushed his sleeves above his hands. “I’ll go find you proper clothing, sir,” Cody said, though he doubted the quartermaster would have anything small enough. Perhaps a bodysuit with the sleeves and legs cut to the proper length? But first he had to call the Jedi Council and Skywalker. “Please do not leave the tent–”

“Am I a prisoner?” he piped up, and Cody could have sworn there was a note of excitement in his voice. He resisted the urge to stare or drop his face into his palm. Of all the things–

“No, but you are in the middle of a military camp, during war time. We all have a duty to carry on with, and going outside might be dangerous if you wander somewhere you should not go.”

Kenobi folded himself in a cross-legged position, the under-tunic slipping off one shoulder, then the other when it was tugged back. He huffed in annoyance at it. Cody spotted a piece of metal on the table that had been slowly taken over by datapads and chips: a replacement for the clips used to hold lightsabers to belt, it looked like.

“May I?” he asked, getting closer to the cot.

Kenobi looked up, saw the clip, nodded. He held up the back of his collar away from his neck, and Cody did his best to gather most of the fabric and hold it in place with the piece of metal.

“Thank you, Commander Cody!”

Hearing his name with the wrong inflection made Cody’s heart do a weird little bump. “Just Cody is fine, sir. I’ll go look for a replacement outfit now, okay? Please stay in the tent.”

“Okay,” Kenobi said. Cody had been around long enough to know that meant he would not find Kenobi there when he came back. He took a couple holos as he put his helmet back on, and found himself taking a deep breath outside the tent. He gestured for the closest trooper to take guard duty—and Cody breathed again, this time in relief, when said nearest trooper was none other than Boil.

Whichever shenanigans were inevitably going to ensue, at least Boil would be right at Kenobi’s back.

+

“ _You’re telling me… that this is Obi-Wan?”_ Skywalker looked too damn amused.

Rex, barely in range of the holo, also seemed amused, the traitor.

Cody held in a sigh, although Rex could probably _see_ it. “Yes, sir. Medical scan confirmed it. He doesn’t appear to know of anything past his present biological age,” he said, concealing his unease at the though t as best as he could. And damn Rex, for _looking_ right at him at his words and being able to pick on his unease. His brother knew too much, up to and including how to read Cody’s emotions. “Our tactical plans had to be put on stand by. I dispatched four two-man teams to scout back to the area this took place to gather as much information as we can. Regardless of what happens on the ground, this is no place for a child to stay.”

He could already hear the remark of “but he’s probably your age!” and was relieved when Skywalker instead turned to Rex: _“We’re on clean-up here—how long do we still have?”_

“ _About eighteen hours. If we double-time it and split the 501st in two teams, about eight.”_

“ _Cody, can you hold where you are for twelve hours?”_

He thought about it: their supplies, the wounded, the Sep’s movements, then nodded. “Yes, sir. We’ll have enough to keep us busy.”

+

The tent, of course, was empty when he came back. Cody automatically patted his side where he was holding on to his General’s lightsaber—it was still there. Kenobi’s vambraces were on the cot, along with the outer tunics the boy had not been wearing. He dropped the bodyglove he had scrounged up next to them.

Boil thankfully responded immediately to his comm. _“We’re at the mess tent, sir. The General is not leaving my sight.”_

The mess tent was filled to capacity, every brother not on-duty inside turned toward… Falk and Kenobi juggling, apparently, using the palm-sized hard fruits that grew all over the planet and that had been added to their grub.

To cries of “One more! One more!”, both contestants added another fruit to their handfuls, Kenobi levitating his, Falk making a quick grab at the one Boil was holding up for him. There was a cheer as nothing fell to the ground and every fruit kept being thrown in the air and falling back in fast hands. After a couple rotations, Falk made a quick toss—and there was a fruit flying toward Kenobi. The boy didn’t even blink and added it to his load—up, down, up, an arc—then sent it back toward Falk, signaling the start of a complex series of passes Cody could barely follow. It ended with Kenobi holding all the fruits in a circle around him with the Force, and enthusiastic applause from their audience.

Cody had seen the Force used in many ways—but this blatantly, never. His General didn’t go for obvious shows of Force. To see it now, like this… Kenobi wasn’t his General. This only reinforced it.

“Impressive,” he offered, taking his helmet off as he neared the table. Both Boil and Falk nodded to him and sat down. The food, of course, was rations and the fruits.

Kenobi beamed at him. “You think so?” All the fruits returned to the crate on the end of the table as if guided by an invisible hand.

Cody nodded. The boy smiled wider, if it was even possible.

Kenobi pushed his sleeves back to get to the food. The under-tunic was still too big, the sleeves falling over his hands even rolled. Cody glanced down and sure, Kenobi was barefoot.

“I have a bodysuit for you at the tent. I think we can cut it to mostly your size. Also, General Skywalker—the Jedi General of the 501st—will be there in twelve hours.” _Hopefully he’ll know what to do_ , he thought, and was very, very careful to keep the thought to himself.

The boy’s face went through several emotions Cody couldn’t exactly give a name to. “Is he going to take me back to the Temple?”

“That would be best. It’s not a place for a kid out there.”

“Even with you guys?”

“Especially with us.”

Kenobi returned to his food in silence.

Cody accepted water and a fruit from Falk. The fruit was meaty, the taste clear and a little salty. He needed to get the scouts’ reports, figure out the new deployment pattern now that Kenobi was out, see if they needed a different guard rotation on account of no Jedi in residence, figure out if even continuing with their offensive was worth it. Honestly Cody thought the planet was a useless bust—yes, it was on the Hydian Way, but it was not a major trade planet nor a hyperspace hub. It would have made more sense to concentrate their efforts both closer to the Inner Rim and on destroying the droids factories themselves, rather than jumping at every dropped armed force the Seps left behind them. He sighed, rubbed his eyes.

There was something wriggly touching his knee under the table. Cody looked up, startled. Obi- Kenobi was right on the other side of the table: it had to have been his foot.

“Are you okay, Cody, sir?” Kenobi said.

Falk and Boil had the kind of expressions on their faces that told Cody he’d have no problem assigning them to guarding Kenobi until Skywalker got there. Cody just felt… out of his depth in a way he did not want to contemplate.

“Ah. Yes. I have a lot on my mind.”

“… sorry.” Kenobi looked down at his plate.

Cody cocked his head slightly to the side, which would have translated as interrogation with the helmet on. “What for, sir?”

“It’s my fault you have more to do. I’m not a Jedi, so I can’t do anything.”

Cody blinked. Boil’s attention was wholly on Kenobi, and Falk’s probably was, too. Kenobi saying he was not a Jedi was not part of their worldview, even with the obvious changes. Cody cleared his throat. “I have a lot to think about even when you are… older, sir. Don’t worry about it.”

Kenobi did not look convinced.

+

The scout teams came back in staggered waves, with news of both the Separatists forces and the area they had been fighting in earlier. The Seps had retreated instead of pressing their assault, falling back along a natural pass on the way to the main spaceport, blocking the direct path there. For now, they were far enough away for the position of the base camp to be held, and for the watch rotations to be maintained.

The scouts also came back with holos of the terrain on the way to the pass—and of the weird things there. It wasn’t Sep work, too old, too organic looking for that—though it did look like traps. All that remained of an ancient civilization? There had been no information about that in the packet they all had had about Tallassenes.

“It’s possible this area had never been surveyed since whoever did this left,” Nol said.

“Could just be the powers that be didn’t give us the info,” Cai replied, and Cody heard the unspoken _wouldn’t be the first time._ “That area there,” he poked at one of the holo, the blue fizz surrounding his finger, “it looks like writing. See that hook and curve? It could be Old High Aurebesh.”

Cody did not have an eye for languages other than Basic and the Mando chants from training, and would have been hard pressed to distinguish Old High Aurebesh from Durese. Cai, however, found languages and writing systems interesting and had made it a hobby to keep his eye on new things. Quite a few of his discoveries on the ground had been passed along to both Republic Intelligence and the Jedi Archives. Cody trusted Cai’s judgment—if the man said it was a writing system, it probably was.

“Good job. If it’s a language known, I’m sure we’ll have a translation and an explanation soon.” He glanced at his chrono: 9 and a half hours and Skywalker would be there.

Nol and Cai looked at each other before—fidgeting. Which was not a mannerism Cody had ever associated with that team. “Are you two good?”

“Yes, sir!” they promptly replied—and looked at each other again.

Cody rubbed his eyes; the damned dust went everywhere and dried everything. “Just spill it.”

“Is… General Kenobi okay?”

“We’ve only heard that he was in the mess tent and… shall we say not quite himself,” Nol explained.

Cody rubbed his eyes some more. “He’s... He’s ok. He was apparently changed to youngling age—I have no clue if it’s a Sep ploy or the result of this,” he waved at the holos. “For now, we continue as if the General had been recalled to Coruscant. General Skywalker will be there in about nine Standard hours to assess the situation.” He stopped and looked at the scouts. “Spread it quietly, make sure there’s not extra ears getting this, and we will continue on as usual.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Cody had no doubts the whole camp would know in less than two hours.

+

Cody walked to Kenobi’s tent only after Cross threatened to sedate him if he didn’t at least nap. Given that Cross had carried out that threat in the past—sedating in no particular order, Kix from the 501st, Kenobi, and Cody—Cody followed the medic’s orders. Or rather almost followed them: he wanted to check on Kenobi first. Skywalker and the 501st were six hours away, there had been no movement from the Seps, and night had fallen, revealing stars bright enough to see without external lights in the camp.

The best part of this entire day was that no man had been killed in the fighting.

Falk was standing guard outside the tent, hands on his rifle and back straight. He nodded at Cody and Cody nodded back and walked in.

Boil was inside, curled atop a sleeping bag half way between the entrance and the cot, and in danger of getting some of the datapads to slip from the table onto his head. He opened one eye, breathed out loudly, and rolled on to his other side.

Kenobi was face-down on the cot, almost hidden under his robe. There was barely a tuft of copper hair poking out. At Cody’s approach, he moved, his face emerging from the folds. “Mm Cody sir, is it morning already?”

Cody crouched down, removed his helmet. “No, I was just checking on you,” he whispered. Kenobi looked even younger, soft in a way than none of Cody’s brothers, even the youngest ones that were just walking, ever had been. Cody missed the little ones, hiding that feeling as best as he could—it wasn’t acceptable for a Commander to seek to protect them, to want to play and spend time with them in any other way than for training purposes. He wasn’t the only brother to feel that way and miss his little brothers, and some, like Waxer— _not gone, just marching ahead of them_ —and Boil turned that feeling into caring for any youngling that crossed their paths, while hiding it under a lot of grumbling.

But Kenobi… he was supposed to have the man’s back, even with that man turned into a youngling. It made his feelings, those tangled things no-one aside from Rex had ever heard about, easier to deal with. Kenobi as a youngling, he could protect.

Cody had to have been even more tired than Cross had suspected, for he blinked and Kenobi’s hand was on his cheek. The boy was frowning, definitively awake. “I’m sorry you’re missing them,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not him, too.”

There was no telling what came over him, aside from the certitude that Boil would never mention anything he heard in the tent tonight: Cody covered the small hand with his. “You have nothing to apologize for. This situation is not your fault—we’re trained for weird things, too. We just want to make sure you’re okay.” He swallowed. “And I’ll see my little brothers again.” He would see them taller, older—soldiers—when protecting them and spending time with them would be replaced by commanding them and sending them off to be killed.

“I still want to help.”

“Let us take care of things for now, okay?”

Kenobi stared at him for an instant before nodding. Cody, on an impulse, kissed his palm before releasing his hand. Kenobi’s eyes widened before he curled around the hand with an expression that Cody in the dim light read as quiet pleasure.

“I’ll be in the next tent to the right, if you need anything,” Cody said, getting to his feet, helmet at his side.

Kenobi only nodded, still curled.

Cody turned around, made his way out—only pausing at the touch on his ankle: Boil’s hand. His brother’s eyes were half-slits, and he nodded to Cody, tapping his ankle once.

Cody released a mental breath he hadn’t realized he had kept, and went to sleep on his own cot.

+

A movement woke him up an unknown length of time later. Cody had his hand on his sidearm before he registered what exactly had woken him up: a smaller body with cold extremities, dragging some heavy fabric with it.

“Sir?” he mumbled, still half-asleep, “What are you-”

Kenobi burrowed between Cody’s arm and his body, spreading the robe haphazardly across them both. The extra body warmth and cover were certainly nice, chasing the chill of the Tallassenes’ night—but the actions in themselves did not compute in Cody’s brain. Jedi were not big on touching. Their body language basically screamed to stay away and leave them space, even between masters and padawans, who seemed to be the closest relations they had. Kenobi and Skywalker certainly kept physical space around them at all time.

Jedi weren’t clones, who thrived on contact with their brothers, who piled together for sleep and protection when they could get away with it.

So for Kenobi to climb in and burrow in a way that made it clear he was there for the rest of the night, either something had happened, or Cody was missing something.

“Do Boil and Falk know you are here?”

No response. Cody pawed at the vambrace he had left on the floor in reach at the same time he tried to not jolt Kenobi. He commed Boil and Falk: “Kenobi is with me,” he said, hoping it was intelligible—he made a note to ask about the reasons for the copious swearing he got as an answer—shut off his comm, then curled around the small warm body sharing his cot. And slept.

+

Kenobi had migrated to using Cody as a mattress during the night. For the first time in days, Cody felt warm and rested, like he had actually slept and not just napped with one eye open and one ear on the many comms that would interrupt said nap. He frowned.

“Awww,” a voice said, quietly, “they’re so cute at this age.”

Cody opened one eye. Boil was in the tent, sitting on the cot that would have been Wooley’s, Cody’s second. “Wooley crashed on the cot in the General’s tent, and took care of most of what happened during the night, sir, no need to frown.” Boil then smiled. “There also has been many holos taken and don’t try to confiscate my helmet, ‘cause they are in more than one place.”

“I am going to break your face,” Cody mumbled, passing a hand over his eyes and his forehead. “And keep those holos to yourself for the moment.”

“Always a pleasure to see you first thing in the morning, Commander, sir,” Boil quipped. “And yes.”

Kenobi moved, his nose firmly mashed into the Republic insignia on the front of Cody’s bodyglove, and made an unhappy noise.

Boil snorted, getting up. “I’ll scrounge up some tea—Wooley’s report is on your datapad, sir,” he said. When he walked out, some of the light from the bright morning filtered in.

Boil hadn’t looked that happy since before Umbara.

Cody’s chrono indicated they had three hours until Skywalker arrived. When he tried to move, Kenobi made another annoyed noise and held Cody’s bodyglove tight.

“We’ll have to get up at some point, sir.”

A head shake was all he answered.

“I can give you until Boil returns. After that, we need to get up.”

There was a pause, then a nod against his chest. Cody brought his right hand to rest on Kenobi’s back, and picked up his datapad with the other, starting to read Wooley’s report.

A whole lot of nothing—Three-Six released from the medical tent, one case of food poisoning—no new orders—no Sep activity during the night, no change in the weird area—

“I don’t want to go back to the Temple.”

“Mhm? Why is that?”

“I miss my friends,” Kenobi said to Cody’s chest. “But I’m not supposed to miss them. And. And I’m sad and I’m not supposed to be sad and they won’t let me be a Jedi if–”

Cody hugged Kenobi, moving until he was sitting with Kenobi curled in his lap and held and safe. The boy cried, in tiny, attempting-to-be-hidden sobs. Cody knew that sound well. It was the noise younger brothers made at night when they knew they weren’t supposed to, crying for brothers they’d never see again, crying because they were lonely, crying because they were afraid in a nebulous yet all-encompassing way that they did not have words for.

Cody had cried like that before.

“It’s okay,” Cody repeated, “it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to miss your friends, nothing is going to happen to you here,” and he did not promise, because it was war and they were on a battlefield; and because Kenobi was a Jedi, regardless of his current size and age, and Cody was a clone trooper. Sometimes Kenobi went places Cody could not follow. “It’s okay,” he said, and repeated, and he held Kenobi close, rubbed his back, petted his hair, Obi-Wan holding him too, hard, like Cody was his only way of staying afloat.

+

Obi-Wan was subdued the rest of the morning, trailing half a step behind Cody, wrapped in his outer tunic. It was, of course, much too large over the modified bodyglove, though he had twisted it in a way that made it look like his robe—like something he could hide behind.

Cody had gone through all the obligations and reports that he had to supervise as Commander in the mess. Obi-Wan had stayed glued to his side, Boil and Falk shadowing them. Just in the hour since they had left the tent, Cody had gotten a new and somewhat disquieting understanding of many of the mannerisms of his older General.

It might not have been his place to comment on any of it, but Cody was starting to think his original ideas about how Jedi younglings were raised had been wrong and that they probably shared many experiences with clones. He didn’t like that. He also didn’t want to assume anything without more information.

He kept an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, the boy leaning against his side, even with the hard plastoid armor in the way. His brothers had quickly caught on the change of atmosphere, and the mess had been quieter than the usual. Every brother that walked in greeted Obi-Wan with smiles, nods and waves, and Obi-Wan smiled, nodded and waved back, greeting each of them by name—names he had learned and remembered in less than a day.

Absently, Cody thought he’d probably face a riot if they had to give Obi-Wan away.

“Nothing new on the Sep’s side, sir. We are in contact with the 501st,” a helmeted communication specialist told him, going too fast for Cody to catch on design helmets to know who it was in the moment he had needed to look up from his datapad.

Obi-Wan squeezed the arm he had grabbed about fifteen minutes ago, Cody having no choice but to keep it around Obi-Wan's body. “It was Tare,” he said. Cody grunted—it made sense he hadn’t caught who it had been, for Tare and his brother-by-choice Thirteen had the exact same designs on their armors, on top of acting exactly like each other, not a mean feat for brothers who hadn’t known each other a year ago.

He shut down his datapad. Obi-Wan had drunk his tea but had only picked at the rations.

“Are you ready?” Cody asked.

Obi-Wan shook his head against Cody’s side—he still got up.

+

Rex walked out of the _Twilight_ first, saluting Cody in a way that told Cody he was hiding the biggest shit-eating grin he could muster under that helmet of his. “Weird Jedi shit, sir?” He didn’t even do a double take at Obi-Wan’s appearance, saluting him as if the General was standing right there instead of several centimeters lower and within arm’s reach of Cody. “Captain Rex, 501st, sir.”

Skywalker did not take things quite as in stride as his second in command. He walked over to Obi-Wan, one looking down, the other looking up, clearly measuring each other.

“Well, that’s a new one,” Skywalker said after a few minutes.

“Yes, sir,” Cody sighed. “I have holos of the area where it happened. Cai thinks some of the markings are writing.”

There was a weird pause where no one seemed ready to move. Then, Obi-Wan lifted his chin up, took the step that separated him from Cody, and wrapped his hand around Cody’s—all the while looking straight at Skywalker as if daring him to comment.

Skywalker’s eyebrows climbed up. “Definitely a new one.”

Cody did not even dare glance at his brother.

+

“Your man has a good eye,” Skywalker said after a few minutes of going through the holos. “I know I’ve seen that language before at the Temple. Beats me if I know what it is, though. It’s probably best if I return to Coruscant with the holos and Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan and Rex were sitting in a corner of the tent, Obi-Wan having dragged Rex in a game involving counting fingers and opening hands.

Skywalker followed Cody’s gaze, then turned back to the holos. “He’s...” he started, “...not what I was expecting.”

“He expressed–” Cody started, paused, but kept going. “He expressed a certain amount of distress at having to return to the Temple.”

“I bet the battlefield is a more attractive environment than the Temple for a kid, even if that kid _is_ my stuffy master,” Skywalker grinned.

Cody did not correct Skywalker’s assumption. He wasn’t sure how to describe the quiet, touch-starved boy who knew all the troopers’ names, who had fire in his eyes, who was sad and afraid and worried about not becoming a Jedi.

“How’s the Sep’s situation?” Skywalker said, dragging Cody back to the matters at hand.

“They’ve retreated and consolidated their forces through the main pass, beyond this area–” The meeting continued.

It was decided that the 212th would remain on the ground on Tallassenes and take care of the remaining Separatists force, with one 501st ship as support. The Seps had not attempted to swarm the 212th from the air, and there had been no sign of ships bound for the planet.

“Honestly,” Skywalker said, “it makes no sense. It’s like they don’t even want to hold the planet, just the main spaceport, and there’s only half the population remaining there.” Many had left for the mountains’ caves and various underground installations and did not seem to give a shit about the situation either way, the clones had found.

“What if holding the planet had never been the point?” Cody wondered out loud.

“Continue,” Skywalker said, blue eyes fixed onto Cody.

Cody crossed one arm across his chest, the other hand going to his face—he knew he had gotten the pose from Obi-Wan, but in that moment it was comforting. “It’s speculation, sir, but think about it. It’s not the first time some kind of trap targets the Jedi commanding officers. The potential of the ruins as a trap, however broken and useless they seem to be,” his hand passed through the holo, “shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Clearly something _did_ happen.” He turned his head. Obi-Wan and Rex were watching them.

“All the more reasons to present this to the Temple,” Skywalker said. “And, no time to waste either.” He grabbed the datachip with all the relevant holos and turned around.

Rex got up, put his helmet on, and knocked his shoulder with Cody’s on the way. Obi-Wan looked at them and made to follow Rex and Skywalker at the latter’s hand gesture. He stopped just at the entrance to the tent, looking back at Cody who was at the table, reorganizing his information to get back to fighting the Seps as soon as possible.

“Are you not coming with us?”

“No sir, I’ll be taking care of the situation here.” Straigthening up made the lightsaber clink against his armor, reminding him of its presence. Cody took it from his belt. “And you should probably leave with this, too.”

Obi-Wan looked toward the entrance, then back toward Cody, and seemed to reach a decision. He darted to Cody and hugged him, face mashed against his hip. Cody’s hand went straight to Obi-Wan’s head, ruffling his hair.

“You’re going to be okay, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan hugged him harder, grabbed the lightsaber, then ran out.

+

Cody did not hear back from any of them for a full rotation. The 212th kept busy, going at the Seps with guerrilla tactics rather than a frontal assault. It worked well, half the known Sep forces fell by the end of the day. The scouts in particular were particularly well-suited to the terrain, leading small teams and triggering rock falls and landslides—and leading strike teams to pick up stragglers once night fell.

From all the movements that were reported back to him and from the movements he witnessed, Cody saw very little of the usual show of forces from the droid armies. To the contrary, they seemed to try to engage his men in small groups, as if trying to lead them toward the ruins and some other rocky areas further east that could have been generously called ruins a century ago. The ship in orbit confirmed there was no other armed force on the planet, and no back-up inbound. None of his men had experienced sudden de-aging.

His suspicion that the Separatists had used the ruins as a Jedi trap seemed correct. After all, Dooku knew the Jedi Archives and the stories and history they contained, as well as the way Jedi worked and what they were taught. General Kenobi had made it clear that the Count had been a Master with access to archives Kenobi barely knew about. And even if there had been no sign that Dooku had been on the planet recently—or at all—it wasn’t so far fetched to think that yes, Tallassenes had been a trap set by the Count based on knowledge most of the Jedi didn’t know about.

Cody documented everything that happened. That information would need to go straight to the Council.

His worry about what happened to Obi-Wan and how he’d be at the Temple, he put away. Worrying was a luxury to keep for after fighting stopped.

+

They gained ground but kept the base camp where it had been set. The terrain between it and the arbitrarily-drawn front line—since the Seps did not follow their known patterns and choose to stay in their pass instead of marching through—was littered with mines and sniper teams.

Cody found himself in the mess at first light, again. There had been no small body to share warmth with, and he had only managed short naps interrupted by comm calls. Wooley’s reports of the night announced more of the same strange Sep behavior, more brothers released from medical, and a few brothers passing away. Those names he put on his personal datapad, in a list getting longer by the day.

That was the only good thing about this planet: minimum casualties.

Boil and Falk sat on the other side of the table from him and took their helmets off. Boil rolled one of the hard fruits to Cody, and both of them tucked into their rations with feigned nonchalance.

Cody sighed and bit into the fruit. “Before you ask, no, I haven’t heard from Ob- the General.”

“Wasn’t going to ask,” Boil said, grumpily.

Cody rolled his eyes.

Falk shrugged. “Can’t fault a brother for trying to ask. He didn’t seem to be doing so good when he left.”

Cody gestured with the hand holding the fruit. “That’s still asking. No.”

Falk and Boil backed off. Sharing their meal was relatively peaceful after that—at least until Wooley poked his head in, spotted Cody, and made a beeline for him.

“Commander! Holocall for you,” he said, in a tone not hushed enough to keep Boil and Falk from hearing. “It’s the General.”

Boil and Falk, of course, heard and perked up. Cody pointed to them again. “No. Back to your duties.” Then he got up and turned to Wooley. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

And damn if Wooley was not smiling, too.

+

“ _I’m very sorry to have left you with that mess, Cody,”_ Kenobi said. And it was Kenobi, older, bearded, wearing clothes his size—not Obi-Wan.

“Your… younger self already apologized. I think we did our best under the circumstances, sir.” The holo, blue and fuzzy, was good enough to let Cody see Kenobi’s nod—to see that his hands were hidden in his sleeves, and that he was in the Temple. “Attached is a more complete report of the findings on the ruins and the Sep movements for the Council, sir,” Cody said.

“ _Anakin told me of your theory—there is every evidence that you are in the right. Considering the many varied Force sects and artifacts in the galaxy, this will certainly make things interesting.”_ One of Kenobi’s hand rose to stroke his chin absently, before he focused back on the call. _“Pass my thanks to Cai. Master Nu would like to add that she’s quite delighted with his find and sent a primer on the language if he’s interested.”_

“Thank you, sir. He’ll be very happy with that.”

They seemed to catch on to what they were doing at the same time: the intense staring, the visual check of all gestures, of body language. Kenobi made the first move. _“I’ll leave the remainder of the Separatist forces on Tallassenes into your capable hands—while the healers have authorized my return, they and the Council insist on my remaining in orbit only.”_

“That seems for the best, sir.”

Kenobi chuckled. _“I tend to agree.”_ There was another weird little moment, then: _“I’d like to talk to you when this is done._ _What is your current estimate on completion_ _?”_

Kenobi wanting to talk to him was not an order. No, this was quite distinctly couched as _something else_ , something to be examined; but later. “Yes, sir. The latest count put the Sep troops at a quarter size of original force–” and the call continued. Cody counted on two rotations to be done ousting the last droids. Next came the work of the diplomats and the talkers to reach the Tallassenes government—thankfully not the work of the 212th in this instance. With the news of his return to normal, Kenobi had also brought the news that the 212th was called to bring support to the 501st on a battlefield along the Hydian Way closer to the Mid Rim.

They ended the call swiftly after a brief overview of the 212th’s strategy: Kenobi being called to Council duty as he was on-planet. Cody looked at the holo-emitter as it shut off without quite seeing it. Two rotations and clean-up and return to the ships. Two rotations until _talking_.

Cody wasn’t sure whether or not he was looking forward to it.

+

“Commander Cody.”

“General Kenobi, Admiral Yularen,” Cody nodded briskly, standing at attention with his helmet under his arm. The air inside the _Negotiator_ felt disturbingly clean and still after the dust and wind of the planet. He’d get used to it again soon enough. “The 212th is on-board and ready to depart.”

“Good, thank you Commander. General,” Yularen said with a short nod, striding to the front of the bridge.

“Good job, Commander,” Kenobi said, a ghost of a smile curling the side of his mouth. “Are all preparations and inspections completed?”

“Thank you, sir, yes. The reports have been sent to your terminal.”

Kenobi nodded, his arms crossed across his chest, his eyes focused on the field of stars beyond the transparisteel bays of the bridge. “In that case… would you be available to talk?”

Cody felt as if he had missed a step. He hadn’t quite believed Kenobi would actually want to _talk_ , whatever that meant in this particular instance. Would he have to recount to his older counterpart what his younger self had done and said? Surely—

“I’m very sorry, that was quite rude of me. Would you join me for tea, Cody? I believe I owe you some explanation and I’ve managed to bring a couple of tins of fresh tea with me from Coruscant.”

“… yes sir.”

They walked to Kenobi’s quarters in silence, only interrupted by the nods of brothers running from one duty to the next. The hyperspace jump came half-way through their walk, barely disturbing their steps.

Kenobi’s quarters weren’t much, in the fashion of all the ships: one room with a desk, terminal, and holo terminal for private calls as the positions of General and Councilor demanded, and a second room barely large enough for a bed and its adjoined ‘fresher. The only concession Kenobi seemed to have made to comfort and practicality was the kettle plugged in on the desk between datapads and holomaps for various battlefields.

“Please take the chair,” Kenobi said, while he took his robe off and turned the kettle on.

Cody stayed where he was until Kenobi returned from the closet-like bedroom with a square pillow. Only then did he put his helmet on the desk and sit on the chair.

“I’m afraid these rooms are not set to share a meal properly,” Kenobi said, fussing with the mugs and the tins of tea. “Do you have a preference for the tea?”

Cody kept his hands on his knees. “No sir. I’ll–” a breath, “–trust your judgment on this.”

The smile Kenobi gave him was the same as earlier: small, hidden. He continued preparing the drinks in silence. It was only once he had sat on the cushion, and Cody had taken his first—surprised at the flavors, but appreciative—sip of the tea, that Kenobi started talking again.

“The—for lack of a better word—spell broke once we breached atmosphere; Anakin was quite surprised. For my part, I remained somewhat confused for a few more hours. The Healers assured me there was no damage. As for the ruins, Cai was right: the language was a regional variant of Old High Aurebesh, specific enough to pinpoint the ruins’ ages and inhabitants… you would not quite believe the amount of information one can find or lose in the Archives.” He took a sip, and Cody copied him. “The Force-sect that inhabited those ruins was very interested in ‘knowing all the times of a person,’ as far as the translation can give us. Our best guess is that it is based on a very pinpoint twist in the Force that, well, reveals much to the one caught in it.”

Kenobi stopped and looked at his mug before he looked up at Cody. “I remember all of the… experience.”

Cody startled, grasping the mug he held in both hands. For some reason that had not occurred to him this could be the case—the younger Obi-Wan had known nothing of the present. Cody had somehow assumed the now-older Kenobi would remember nothing of the event.

“I am very sorry to have put you in that situation. And…” Kenobi said, bowing his head then looking at Cody straight in the eyes, “...thank you,”

“I—I was only doing my job, sir,” he protested. There was something else in Kenobi’s words and he couldn’t _see_ it.

“No, Cody, you did far more. Far, far more...” and there was that smile again. “You kept me safe, and I hadn’t been safe in… a very, very long time.”

Cody didn’t know how to answer that, or if an answer was even expected.

Kenobi let out a little laugh. “I should go apologize to Boil and Falk for slipping from their care during the night.”

“They’ll be happy to see you back to yourself.” Cody took a sip of the tea. “They all will be, if they haven't already.” And he was happy, he _was_ —it just came with a strange twist in his chest.

He was General Kenobi’s second in command. Protecting him _was_ part of his job. But it came in a very different shape than protecting _Obi-Wan_. He sighed mentally.

Seeming to have sensed his internal questioning—and he probably had sensed it—Kenobi did not say anything else. They finished their tea in silence.

Kenobi’s terminal beeped. “Back to work,” Kenobi sighed, getting up.

“Yes sir,” Cody said.

At the door, Kenobi stopped him with a “Cody–”

Cody turned. Kenobi was at his terminal, the screen reflecting blue light in his face. His eyes slid to Cody. “My door is always open.”

Cody paused, for an instant, because again there was something else in the words he couldn’t see. Then he nodded. “Thank you sir.”

The door shut with a quiet hiss behind him. He took a deep breath, put his helmet on, and turned back toward the hangars.

It was no time to stop.


End file.
